Juan Escalona Reguera

He was a Cuban military officer and jurist who held important positions following the triumph of the revolution. Brigadier General, Minister of Justice, Attorney General of the Republic, President of the National Assembly of People's Power, Doctor Honoris Causa in Legal Sciences.

He was born in Santiago de Cuba. At six months old, he had to abandon his home with his family due to an earthquake, moving to a town called Prosperidad, located between Boniato and El Cristo.

After moving, he began his primary education, which he continued at the "Juan Bautista Sagarra" school. He later studied at the Institute of Secondary Education in Santiago de Cuba. His father was a solicitor with an insurance brokerage. His mother was a housewife. There were three siblings: Mario, who graduated as a doctor in Havana and after the triumph of the Revolution served for several years as vice minister of Public Health, and Silvia, the only daughter, who was a language teacher until her retirement.

He was one of the founders of the University of Oriente, when it had not yet been legalized, and he started by paying, month by month, to maintain the salaries of the professors they had at that time. During that period, to try to legalize the university, they collected one million signatures from people in Oriente, headed by senators and representatives from all political parties in the province.

Within this framework, he was part of the delegation of students and professors who visited Havana to meet with President Carlos Prío. Bringing albums with signatures from the population and politicians, the president directed them to go to the Capitol to see Miguel Suárez Fernández, president of the senate, finally achieving senate approval for the legalization of the University of Oriente.

He was at the Santiago carnivals, celebrating his graduation as a lawyer and his brother Mario's graduation as a doctor. Around five in the morning they were returning to a house his father owned in Siboney. Walking down Aguilera Street, they heard gunshots, but they thought that since Santiago was celebrating carnivals, it must be related to the festivities.

Facing possible dangers from the assault on the Moncada, his father locked them in Siboney. He left the day when Juan Leizán's truck was being held up on the road. He was able to observe that a military officer (Lieutenant Pedro Sarría) and the archbishop of Santiago, Monsignor Enrique Pérez Serantes, were discussing with Commander Andrés Pérez Chaumont. When passing near the truck, he realized that one of the detainees was Fidel Castro.

Upon receiving his degree in Santiago de Cuba itself, along with a group of young lawyers, he dedicated himself fundamentally to defending those accused of revolutionary activities, among them were Carlos Amat and Jorge Serguera. Because Fulgencio Batista had not yet implemented the appointment of special judges for the Emergency Courts, they were able to resolve some situations of detained persons.

He became a notary in El Cobre; his father paid someone at the Ministry of Justice about 3,000 pesos so he could win an opposition examination that he never took. He prepared the passport for Frank País when he traveled to Mexico to meet with Fidel. He took his fingerprints, hiding them in the law office that existed across the street, whose owner was Rubén Alonso, an authentic representative. When the police searched the office, they did not find them.

During the strike of April 9th, he was commissioned to tour Santiago and inform Vilma Espín about the situation regarding the closure of businesses. He remained like this until Pelayo Cuervo was killed. At that moment he realized that being a lawyer offered no guarantee. Laureano Ibarra, a noted Batista supporter and cousin of his mother, called him and told him to get out of Santiago de Cuba, because José María Salas Cañizares said that he was not a lawyer but a communist and was going to kill him.

He received an invitation from Félix Pena to take up arms; he was a member of the Socialist Popular Party, and this organization told him that he was still useful in the city, that he could freely go to the mountains. He discussed with the party in Havana and finally they authorized him to take up arms.

He entered the II Front through the San Luis area; when he arrived at the headquarters, he found Raúl Castro, who reproached him, "Well, it took you long enough to take up arms." Escalona replied, "It was not my personal responsibility." Raúl answered: "I know. I know there are many old timers who say this is not going to work for anything. When they see the revolution in power, they're going to think differently."

He worked as an auditor and participated in the founding of the Tumbasiete school. Among the faculty were Vilma Espín, Asela de los Santos, Jorge Risquet and other colleagues. He taught Constitutional Law. Later, after the first takeover of Songo, Raúl gave him the order to form the government. It was composed of a doctor to attend to health problems, a worker to give a proletarian sense to that leadership, and a teacher to achieve some cultural level.

When the Revolution triumphed in January 1959, there was an encounter with Fidel Castro at the América sugar mill and later on January 2nd at the Ferreiro family house in Santiago. At that moment Fidel was planning the triumphal march to Havana. When he left for the capital, he gave Raúl instructions to stay in Oriente and control the situation. There the efforts began to try to organize that regiment.

When he remained in Santiago de Cuba, he was Raúl's aide, performing among other duties the wedding of Raúl and Vilma, in his capacity as Captain Auditor of the Rebel Army. Later, when Raúl traveled to Havana, fellow Manuel Piñeiro took charge of the government, and Escalona remained as aide for clandestine affairs.

When the revolutionary courts were founded, he became the chief of the South Oriente court, which attended to Baracoa, Guantánamo, Santiago, Bayamo and Manzanillo.

After the revolutionary triumph, he held different responsibilities such as Aide to the Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces. In 1981, he was appointed Deputy Minister of the FAR for Civil Defense. He worked on the preparation of the law that created the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (MINFAR). Later he worked as aide to Commander Raúl Castro. In 1960 he accompanied Fidel on his trip to New York. As a member of the delegation that attended the United Nations.

When the Western Army was founded, Commander Guillermo García was appointed chief and Escalona was named chief of the General Staff, a position he held until April 1962, when he was transferred back to Oriente to work at Caney de Las Mercedes, in the construction of the Las Mercedes School Center.

During the October Crisis, Commander Sergio del Valle sent him to Santiago under Raúl's command; Raúl designated him as aide to the chief of the Soviet division initially stationed in Yerba de guinea (Songo - La Maya) and later moved to the II Eastern Front.

When the October Crisis ended, he worked with William Gálvez on the Isle of Pines, and later returned to Havana to work on the Law of Compulsory Military Service. He also worked on the creation of military committees, municipality by municipality, throughout the country.

In 1975, when Cuba was designated as the host of the XI World Festival of Youth and Students, he was appointed vice president of the Organizing Committee. At the end of the event, he was sent to attend Advanced Basic School, where he graduated with the commendations of the Minister of the FAR.

He worked on the creation of a human resources commission of which he was executive secretary, but it did not function due to obstacles from the Ministry of Labor. He also worked in Civil Defense and traveled to the Soviet Union; upon his return, he was appointed chief of the operational group for the fight against dengue.

He was appointed chief of the Command Post that was established at MINFAR; when Rogelio Acevedo traveled to Angola, he remained and assumed the responsibility of chief of the General Staff. At the Command Post, they had deployed maps marked with different situations. The encryption system was not like it is now; it was much more outdated. The cipher came in pieces and you had to keep waiting sheet by sheet to prepare the daily report. Based on the information received, Fidel studied the maps, began the analysis, decided what had to be done and gave the appropriate orders.

On one occasion, Fidel sent him to Angola to speak with Leopoldo Cintra Frías (Polo), with the mission of transmitting the following message to him: "Tell him that if winning the war in Angola means losing him, it's not worth winning it. Tell him to stop his foolishness, to stop being on the front line, he has to take care of himself."

He also traveled to Moscow to see Senén Casas, who was attending the Voroshilov, to discuss matters that later he would discuss with the Soviets. He attended with Fidel the XXV Congress of the CPSU, where he traveled with the ciphers and maps. Each day, at the end of the congress session, Fidel brought an invited guest to the house where they stayed and gave him a comprehensive explanation of the situation of the war in Angola.

On this trip, he also visited Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, where he participated in meetings held by Fidel with Todor Zhivkov and Marshal Josep Broz Tito, respectively, to whom he provided comprehensive and detailed information about the war in Angola. Later he continued his trip to Conakry, which is where Fidel and Agostino Neto met. Since the war had begun, they had not seen each other.

When the Barbados airport was closed, Fidel sent him to see the president of Guyana, Forbes Burnham, and ask him for authorization for planes to land there with wounded and without weapons. Burnham's response was, "Tell Fidel that I'm providing the airport. The rest is his problem."

From October 1983, he held the position of Minister of Justice, directing the working group that in 1987 prepared the modifications to the Criminal Code. He also worked on the new laws for popular courts, notary services, associations, civil registries, the new Civil Code and on Decree Law 87, related to the expansion of grounds for filing a review procedure against final judgments of the courts. In 1989, he was designated prosecutor for the trial of Case 1.

President of the National Assembly of People's Power

He also served as president of the National Assembly of People's Power from 1990 to 1993.

He served as attorney general of the republic from 1993 until 2014 when he was relieved of his responsibilities due to health problems.

He was awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa in Legal Sciences from the University of Havana.